The Not-So-Social Network
by aj0911
Summary: She's put everything on the line for her tech company. She's going to conquer the world by storm, nothing else matters except for this company ...until she runs into an unforeseen obstacle with blue eyes. An AU from a first-time fanfic writer about KatPee in the tech world :) Might become M later on...we'll see!
1. Chapter 1

"Ah damnit!" Katniss threw her hands in frustration as she watched her computer crash right while she was polishing the last Keynote slide. She normally tried to keep her cool, but this was killing her ... she needed to get this pitch deck done before her meeting with Snow Ventures next week. Gale made a sympathetic huff, his eyes never leaving his own screen as he clacked away on his keyboard, dubstep coming out of his headphones. Thom was clearly in his own zone with his brows furrowed as he scanned his lines of code trying to find the elusive bug that kept their app crashing on Android. Katniss sighed, and headed to the kitchen to refill her 4th...no maybe 5th cup of her drug of choice, caffeine, for the day. She repeated her Dad's favourite mantra from Nietzsche "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger" hoping it would give her some reprieve. Instead she was hit with an overwhelming pain of loss, and she had to take a deep breath to will herself not to cry at the thought of her father's soothing voice...man, she always knew that regardless of how tough entrepreneurship could be sometimes, her Dad had trekked along a much tougher path...

Katniss' father had been a provider, he had immigrated to the US as a PhD student from Salzburg and had never stopped busting his butt since he set foot on US soil. Within weeks of landing he had met Katniss' mother, Lily, at an ESL class. She was filling in for her friend that night as a volunteer English conversation partner, and as both described it, as soon as gray eyes met blue, they were both goners. They fell hard and FAST, and within 1 year of that first glance, the Everdeens were living in a tiny basement apartment in the Bronx, with Katniss popping up shortly thereafter. Her father was never willing to take it easy, he did everything and anything from delivering pizza to plumbing to shovelling driveways to scrape up enough cash to keep Katniss well-fed and happy. When he finally landed a teaching position at Colorado State, her mother and father were so happy they held each other with the widest smiles. They jumped up and down until they both hit their heads on the damp, low ceiling of their basement home, and laughed until they cried. 7 year old Katniss had squeaked in excitement when she led baby sister Prim into their room in their new home in Colorado and saw that they had their very own window! Years of living in a basement apartment had left Katniss and Prim in perpetual dim lighting...the first things the little girls did was push their beds next to the window so they could stare at the stars at night. Life had just started to feel blissfully like the American dream, until a mere 3 years later, her father left early for a hike and never came home...and the dream vanished into tear-filled thin air...

"Earth to freakin' Katniss" Gale chucked a ball of paper at her hitting her smack in the forehead. She snapped out of it and scowled, "Well at least your aim's getting better in one part of your body, don't forget to clean the bathroom." Gale turned a deep red. They had moved into a place with cheap rent to keep their costs low but they didn't anticipate a tiny house also came with a tiny toilet ...Gale had been having a hard time "aiming" and it had been the running joke of the startup. She felt a twinge of guilt both for chirping Gale and for also zoning out on work to think about her father. After all, Gale had been through just as much. Gale's father had been her father's regular hiking buddy and the two regularly drove off to explore the nearby mountains. She could still vividly remember that night when a pregnant Hazelle Hawthorne had arrived with Gale and Rory, her eyes hopeful that they had received some sort of contact from the men ...Lily Everdeen's face remained emotionless as she faintly shook her head. Both families spent the entire night worrying, Katniss remembered making her first pot of coffee that night, watching Hazelle and Lily share restrained looks of fear. Prim and Rory had eventually dozed off but Gale and Katniss sat awake the entire night sharing a pained silence as they choked back tears, waiting for their fathers to return home. She was grateful he hadn't tried to comfort her with false hope. She knew something was wrong - her father always made it home before sundown when he left for his hikes. Always.

Both men were listed as missing after 48 nail-biting hours, and Katniss remembered riding shotgun in the car with her frantic mother, stopping at every ranger station asking for any clues on her father's whereabouts. It was 2 weeks until a local ranger found their bodies, or what was left of them...they had been crushed by a sudden rockfall, apparently there had been a thunderstorm the night before and the heavy downpour had loosened the earth in the area. Their fathers had just ventured one step too far along the trail - wrong place at the wrong time. Their deaths devastated both families, pushing Gale and Katniss into supporting each other. They started off with more silent moments, eventually turning into shared hikes and an easy friendship that weathered over 12 years of painful recovery. Last year they had scraped together the last of their fathers' life insurance payouts and set out to do something huge with it. Katniss and Gale had been freelancing for a few years to make some extra money to support their families but it had come up too short to keep Prim with her.

Katniss' mother had remarried last year to one of her former flames, taking underage Prim with her to the Upper East Side. She had offered to take Katniss, but Katniss was trying to finish off her degree at CSU and she knew she could never leave her father's beloved mountains behind. Part of Katniss resented her mother for remarrying, but another knew this was her twisted way of "providing" a security net for her and Prim. Katniss only hoped that if she could make more than a meagre salary, she could pay for Prim to come live with her.

Gale's mother had responded differently, pouring her heart into starting a cleaning business, the Hawthorne Home Cleaners. Something about how Hazelle Hawthorne had forged her own way of controlling her destiny set something off in Katniss last year and she had talked Gale into launching a tech startup with her. They already knew how to code and design as well as anyone, and she sure as heck knew they had the drive to pull it off. Fast forward a few months and they were now living in a tiny house with their buddy Thom, who they had wrangled into this operation.

Their social platform and app, _District 12_, had launched with quite a bit of buzz a few months ago. It was geared at outdoor enthusiasts providing wilderness survival tips, push notifications for hazards or inclement weather, and recommended routes of travel for various seasons of the year. Her favourite feature however was a safety log that let users log their planned route and estimate time of return and share it with their loved ones. The initial buzz for _District 12 _had waned a little since the launch, and Katniss hated looking at their dwindling savings - this wasn't just a dream, this was her and Gale's entire hope to save other children from their painful fate- so the trio kept themselves powered on coffee and Red Bull dreaming of landing a TechCrunch story, reaching 1 million users and raising their first round of capital.

She pushed the hair from her eyes, and restarted her computer - she had to make this work, for her, for Gale, for him.

...

"Ah fuck, I'm running late! Gale hurry the fuck up!" Katniss pounded on the bathroom door, braiding her hair to hide the fact she had slept in too late to shower, while trying to tuck in the tail of her shirt into her dress pants.

"Calm down Catnip, I'm almost done...what are you in such a rush for an-oh shit!" Gale opened the door, whatever sleep had been in his eyes now jolted awake with realization, "today's the pitch with Snow Ventures isn't it?" Katniss didn't waste a breath to answer as she shoved her toothbrush in her mouth and nodded wildly. "Okay, don't worry Catnip, you've done this pitch a million times, just go out there and come home with $1 million dollars, no big deal! Thom finally fixed that bug last night, so you can show them the updated demo, I'll get coffee started."

Katniss mumbled a thanks and splashed water on her face. Within 5 minutes she was out the door, scrambling to get downtown for her meeting with Seneca Crane, the Associate at the VC firm. She hopped off the bus quickly, only then realizing she had left her phone on the seat. As she turned around to chase the bus down she ran smack into a pole...no wait, too soft to be a pole...she opened her eyes ready to curse the living daylights out of her obstacle but instead her mouth gaped open as she stared into the most breath-taking blue ones. And then she started to feel hot, burning sensation on her breasts...


	2. Chapter 2

"Oh shit -I'm sorry, damn it" his blue eyes darted down to her chest, and as her gray eyes followed and finally her brain caught up ...this human obstacle had spilled his coffee all over her -or rather she had ran into his coffee - she scowled at the massive stain on her shirt. "Does it burn? Should I get you ice? Oh fuck, I'm sorry, I'm sorry!"

Katniss tried to keep her scowl on but couldn't help but crack a small grin at the bumbling human obstacle. He ran his hand nervously through his blonde hair, his eyes full of sincere apology and embarrassment. She looked at the bus that had driven off -fuck, there goes that phone...She cut off his incessant apologizing "Look I've got to go - no burns, don't worry about it." She turned to scramble to Snow Ventures, stain or no stain, she needed to kill it today.

Katniss rushed into Snow Ventures with about 2 minutes to spare, she took a deep breath, pushed her hair from her eyes and pushed through the gold-trimmed doors. The receptionist cocked her eyebrow as Katniss walked in, eyes full of judgment.

"You're looking a little, ahem, un-ladylike. Where are your manners young lady?" the receptionist rudely remarked. "Are you sure you're in the right place?" Katniss tried not to let it get to her, and stared at her nameplate instead. Effie Trinket. " Hmph, what a ridiculous name, don't let her get to you, she has a funny name and probably tries to make up for her self-esteem issues by picking on others" she tried to comfort her nerves.

"I'm Katniss Everdeen. I've got an appointment with Mr. Seneca Crane," her voice came out quieter than she hoped. Effie kept her eyebrow cocked waiting for Katniss to say something. It took Katniss a second too long to realize why, and she couldn't help but clench her fists and mumble a quick "thank you."

Grabbing the remnants of her pride, Katniss walked over to the white leather couch and sat down. The coffee table had the largest vase of white roses. They smelled sickeningly sweet, Katniss' stomach churned, as she tried to go through the slides again in her head.

"Hello there Katniss Everdeen" Seneca Crane walked in dressed in a stiff suit, his steely eyes reminded Katniss of a feral rodent. She took his clammy fingers and tried to give it a firm shake. "Come with me Katniss, we're set up in the Board Room." He made no other attempts at conversation as Katniss followed him down a narrow hallway. The scent of the roses still flooded her nostrils, she wondered if those roses were artificial...

She walked into the board room and saw two others. "Miss Everdeen, this is Enobaria, and that's Brutus, both senior associates here at Snow Ventures." Katniss studied them each briefly. Enobaria didn't even bother looking up from her iPhone, her hair neatly pulled back from her high cheek bones. Brutus reached out his hand and bared his teeth in an aggressive smile, his eyes raking her body before shaking her hand too hard for her comfort. "You missed your mouth while drinking coffee or something?"

She took a deep breath and tried to channel Prim's charm, "Yeah my jaw dropped while I was reading about Bill Nguyen's resignation from Color, and saw their valuation." Brutus, Enobaria and Seneca broke into a chuckle. Good, she had broken the ice, she handed them each a copy of her deck and started her pitch.

"District 12 is a mobile app that creates a social support to keep outdoor enthusiasts safe and prepared while they enjoy nature. We are ..." Katniss paused realizing Enobaria, Brutus and Seneca had all pulled out their phones and were staring at their screens, completely ignoring her. She needed to do something. Fast. She slapped her hands down on the table...

"12 years ago, my father kissed my Mom, hugged my sister and I, and hopped into his car -" she paused, trying to contain the emotion in her voice, "he never made it home. He was crushed to death on a hiking trail but his death could have been completely preventable." She finally had their undivided attention. Hmph she smirked, they have hearts after all...she hated playing the emotional card, but she knew she needed to be honest about why she was doing this. She pitched _District 12 _from her heart.

"That was great Katniss, still a little early for us, but keep me posted. We liked what we saw. Get some more traction and then we can talk again," Seneca said, shaking her hand as he walked Katniss to the reception area. She was so emotionally spent she just nodded and smiled.

She was in such high spirits she even decided to thank Effie on her way out. "You're welcome dear, oh, this was left for you." Effie handed her a folded sheet of paper. "Some fellow dropped it off after you went in."

Katniss was confused but she reached for the paper nonetheless. A $50 bill tumbled out along with a note in scratchy handwriting:

_So sorry about the coffee spill. This should cover the dry cleaning bill. _

_-The idiot who should look where he's going :) _


	3. Chapter 3

"Damn! You should go running into guys with coffee more often Catnip!" Gale whistled as she chucked the fifty into their collective house piggy bank. It'd go towards toilet paper, ramen and maybe some cheap beer later. "He probably gave her a fifty because he could see through her wet shirt" Thom chimed in. Katniss picked up the stress ball at her desk and whipped it at her two buffoons of best friends, snickering when it hit Thom's nether regions.

"Holy shit - Catnip, it's time you got some action! Maybe a lay - ow- will put you in a better mood" Thom chirped in between whimpers, "Don't worry, I still got your back" he winked. She turned back to her laptop, racking her brain for some ideas on how to attract more users to the product. Seneca had said on a scale of 1-10, she was an 11 when it came to having fire, a drive that entrepreneurs needed. She just needed to use that fire in the right way and get results. She dug through her knapsack looking for her phone - oh wait, fuck.

"Just going to dash down to the Lost & Found centre, left my phone on a bus today ...going to try and play the odds, not that it's ever been in my favour" Katniss explained as she grabbed her coat, the boys didn't even respond as they were deep in their dubstep code mode.

Katniss walked briskly, wondering how to improve their site's SEO. Which blogger had written about this recently? Gabriel Weinberg? Or wait, no maybe it was Dave McClure- Oof! Damnit, I've got to stop walking into things. Katniss opened her eyes, relieved this time it was really an inanimate obstacle, a parking meter that stood unharmed. Katniss rubbed her arm as she heard some loud laughter. She narrowed her eyes and turned to see who dared cackle at her pain...her eyes widened- it was just her luck. Just her fucking luck.

"Wait I don't get it Clove. She's such a huge whore but she can't even walk the streets properly" Gillian "Glimmer" Williams snarked. Katniss clenced her fists, grinding her teeth, but willed herself to walk the other way. "Hey bitch, you dropped a dollar! Don't want to lose your hard earned pole money"

Katniss turned, and then realized her mistake. She wasn't carrying any cash, Glimmer was just shouting to try and humiliate her -Katniss cursed herself for being duped into turning around. She tried to fight off tears, but couldn't help one hot, fat tear from rolling down her cheek. She wanted to run but found herself frozen in place, she lost her phone, her app wasn't getting enough downloads, she was getting bitched out in the street -Katniss closed her eyes, hoping to keep any more tears from burning down her face.

"Bullying isn't a good look for anyone ladies, and given how much crap you already have caked on your faces, you two better not risk it." A male voice chimed from behind Katniss. She pinched herself, was she dreaming? This kind of knight-in-shining-armour, standing-up-against-bullies shit was only in cheesy movies or PSAs. "Real or not real?" she whispered before she realized she had thought out loud by accident. "Real" he answered. Then she felt a hand on her shoulder, sending shivers down her spine and confirming this was in fact, real.

Katniss finally cracked one eye open and saw a look she didn't see too often on Glimmer and her minion, Clove's faces - shame. "You two better get out of here before I take a picture of you and publicly blast you guys on Twitter" he warned with an edge in his voice. Katniss couldn't bear looking at the two women anymore and slowly turned so she could catch a glimpse of her rescuer before dashing away. She was grateful but also embarrassed - she could take care of herself, and didn't need to rely on anyone -

All plans of making a quick exit escaped her brain as she came face to face with a pair of familiar blue eyes. "Hey," he smiled, wiping away her stained cheek with his thumb. "Don't listen to those fucking bitches. Sorry, excuse my French, did you get my note? Can I buy you a coffee? I won't spill it on you I promise!"

She was dumbfounded. She knew she was not the best with words, but Katniss had never been speechless before but here she was staring into his brilliant eyes, her cheeks flushed from humiliation but maybe also something else? "I -uh - got note - uh, I have got ...to uh go" she managed to squeak out, her eyes darting to figure out her best route of escape.

"Haha, the beautiful, brilliant ones are always hard to catch. Always on the go..." he winked. "Can I at least get your numb-"

Too late. She had already scrambled past him as she heard his fading words.


End file.
